Are you thinking of taking your yard from lawn to drought-tolerant landscaping? The City of Pasadena has an event on its calendar to might help you get started, the Drought Tolerant Landscape Workshop on April 4. Participants will learn about turf removal, irrigation, plant species and maintenance, and about City incentives.

Instructor for the half-day workshop is Tim Wheeler, who, according to the City's website, "has more than 25 years in the green industry" and has taught classes on topics ranging from Park Facilities Maintenance to Turf Grass Production.

Pasadena Water & Power (PWP) is holding an essay contest that will award $5,000 educational scholarships to two college-bound high school seniors in Pasadena. The essays must be 300-500 words long and speak to one of two proposed topics:

A: California is currently experiencing a historic drought. What could Pasadena Water and Power do to teach students, residents and businesses how to use water more efficiently and sustainably?

B: Energy efficiency plays a large role in Pasadena Water & Power’s current and future energy plans. Please describe what Pasadena residents and businesses can do to use energy more efficiently and what PWP can do to encourage sustainable energy usage.

The guidelines for the contest state that PWP is "looking for a thoughtful and well written essay that demonstrates creativity and research on the topic of choice." The deadline for submissions is April 10, 2015. Awardees will be notified via email by April 30, 2015.

Exhibition. As part of the Pasadena Arts Council's AxS Festival 2014, the Armory presents Karin Apollonia Müller's World’s Edge, a photographic exploration of the intersection between the natural landscape and complex urbanization. Ends this summer.

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Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in Pasadena. For times, addresses and other details click on the link to the event owner's webpage.

Exhibition. As part of the Pasadena Arts Council's AxS Festival 2014, the Armory presents Karin Apollonia Müller's World’s Edge, a photographic exploration of the intersection between the natural landscape and complex urbanization. Ends next summer.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in Pasadena. For times, addresses and other details click on the link to the event owner's webpage.

Do you know how your carbon footprint compares to that of other Americans? Whether you use more or less water, gas and electricity than the average person? On Saturday, the Pasadena chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV-PA) will co-sponsor a Climate Change Forum where attendees can bring their recent bills and learn to grade their carbon footprint. (For details see the LWV-PA website.)

The Climate Change Forum is being co-sponsored by a number of organizations working toward environmental sustainability, including the recently formed Arroyo Interfaith Environmental Coalition, Transition Pasadena and the Arroyo Seco Foundation. Parker said that she hopes for the event to contribute to a ground swell that will eventually equal the push of lobbyists from the oil companies in strength.

Representatives from congregations in the Pasadena area are forming a new council, the Arroyo Interfaith Environmental Coalition, to support each other in their work for a more sustainable environment. The coalition will focus on making church practices, campuses or legislation more earth-friendly, on advocating for climate, energy and water issues, and on strengthening relationships between the faiths.

So far, representatives from about a dozen faiths are involved. The new council will kick off on Sunday afternoon at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church on Orange Grove with an event titled Interfaith Earth Stewardship Summit.

The idea for the coalition originated in late 2013, when Susette Horspool, the chair of the Green Council at the Neighborhood UU Church, reacted to public media articles "about conservative religions deciding to promote good earth stewardship, while simultaneously claiming they weren't 'environmentalists.'

"I decided to set up a summit to help bond faiths of all kinds who wanted to support a healthy environment," Horspool said in an email on Friday. "Didn't matter if they called their work 'climate change activism' or 'stewards of God's creation.'" The coalition took off when Tom Brady from the environmental committee at All Saints Church joined the effort. He is now its interim president.

Brady's outlook goes even further than the collaboration of faith groups. In an email on Saturday he said: "It is essential that the environmental community work with the faith community to respond to the unprecedented challenge of the climate crisis. For too long, these groups have worked on separate tracks, despite a shared interest in preserving the natural world/Creation."

Brady added that both groups would benefit from collaborating and increasing communication. Noting that the coalition's tentative mission statement is "to promote 'cultivating compassion and thankfulness for all life in a community of friends,'" he said: "I cannot imagine any secular person denying the need for more compassion and community in our too-insulated and fragmented world."

At this point, about a dozen faiths and churches are part of the coalition. They include Unitarian Universalist, Episcopalian, Mennonite, Methodist, Quaker, Jewish, Pagan, Presbyterian, Baha'i, United Church of Christ, and three interfaith groups. Representatives from other faiths have announced that they will, as a minimum, attend the summit on Sunday.

The program for the event includes a presentation on The Role of the Faith Community in Addressing the Environmental Crisis by keynote speaker John B. Cobb, Jr. (Emeritus Professor, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate School.) There will also be three panels, one on Communication/ Outreach/ Worship, one on Greening Congregational Operations, and one on Addressing the Climate Crisis. The driving forces behind the summit were Horspool, Brady and Allis Druffel, who is the Southern California Outreach Director at California Interfaith Power & Light.

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Reporting for this blog

Christina Schweighofer is an Austrian born, bilingual journalist who immigrated to the United States in 1999. She, her husband and their daughter live in Pasadena, California. Christina freelances for American, German and Austrian newspapers and magazines including Pasadena Weekly and various USC publications.

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